The Jobs-To-Be-Done theory (by Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School) says this: people don’t buy your product, they hire your product for a job. Understand the job, understand why people switch to your product, and marketing your product will be much less of a guessing game. This presentation was given on: - April 7, 2017: hosted by Invest Ottawa - May 25, 2017: hosted by Impact Hub Ottawa Slides updated with narration. Links from the presentation are at: http://pascallaliberte.me

1. Get More Traction for
Your Product Using
Jobs-To-Be-Done
by Pascal Laliberté

2. What
You’ll
Leave
With
• Knowledge about the theory
of Jobs-to-be-done
• A way to understand what
causes people to purchase
products
• Ideas on improving your
marketing messaging

3. An Intro to the Theory
The Jobs-To-Be-Done Theory came out of Harvard by Professor
Clayton Christensen.
People don’t buy products, they hire
products for a job.
“
Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek from the Re-wired Group contributed
ways to apply the theory in practice.

4. Milkshakes
STORY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84LymEs67Y
People were buying milkshakes from this fast food chain. The chain wanted to
increase its sales and tried introducing different flavours. No big effect. They then
realized that people were buying milkshakes on their way to work, in the morning!

5. Jobs
To
Be
Done
People don’t
buy products, they
hire products
for a job.
Can it be applied
to my situation?

6. Jobs
To
Be
Done
People don’t
buy products, they
hire products
for a job.
Product
Marketing

7. Product Marketing
Your efforts are
about getting
your product to
the buyers, and
attracting your
buyers to the
product.

8. Product Traction
✖
Do this well, and you’ll get sales. Get a
good product, and it’ll be used, and people
will tell other people about it. You’ll get
traction for your product.

9. Product Marketing
Personas
Target Market
Positioning
Differentiation
Pricing Strategy
Automation
Lean Methods
Industries
There are many tactics you can use. All of them help at increasing
your odds of a sale. In the end, they’re affecting a correlation.

10. Project management software
EXAMPLE
Let’s say you’re selling project management software. You understand the
metallurgical industry well, and so you set out to create software for project
managers in that industry. You put ads in the publications they read, you go to the
same conferences. But it’s not selling.

11. Personas
Target Market
Positioning
Differentiation
Pricing Strategy
Automation
Lean Methods
Industries
Affecting a correlation
So you target only the project managers and you try out different target markets

12. ?
You thought your efforts got you most of the way there, but it’s
missing some important details…

13. Causal Factors
What situation caused the
buyer to hire your product?
There’s still a huge gap to
bridge. The sale isn’t in the
bag yet.

14. Basecamp
STORY
Basecamp sells project communication software (communication, because it’s a
place where the decisions and next steps about a project are detailed). They built a
product for themselves, and it sold well. But they noticed that people were buying
their software for different reasons. Accountability: a place where they could point
to for a decision, for who’s responsible for what task. More precisely, when the team
went from 3 to 4 people, the mix of cobbled-together solutions no longer worked.
So they sought a new solution for that job.

15. With that knowledge Basecamp changed their messaging. Here’s what they’re running now.

16. See how they’re explicit about describing the pain points? Messy email chains, bunch of apps

17. And the benefits in contrast…

18. They use the instead of… pattern

19. Deeper into the site,
the same use of
“instead of”, and
highlighting a feature
that solves that
problem

20. The situation, not the buyer profile
That’s the core of the Job-To-Be-Done idea. The persona
helps understand the general context, but it’s the Job, the
struggling moment, that tells you the real purchase driver.
!!!

21. Basecamp is touting its features, but see how they’re connected to a specific pain
point? In our project management software, let’s say you realize that some people
are asking for features you don’t have. Although adding features might be helping
you get these clients, you might be creating anxiety in the newcomers who see your
project with a specific job in mind.
“I don’t know if I’ll need these features” <turns around>
Project management software
EXAMPLE

22. Anxieties about
the product
Anxieties act as a brake in the purchase journey. They push
people away from the purchase.

23. Your features might be creating anxiety
Think twice about adding or touting a feature in your
product. Instead of attracting someone new to your product,
extra features might be pushing your buyers away.

24. Ebooks
STORY
I was interviewing this person who had bought two ebooks. It was in July, and in
October, a seminar was coming up, and he wanted to get ready. So, the Job was
“advance in my career”. Only it was difficult for him to make the decision. “They’re so
expensive”. I thought that was curious. “How much” — “$16 each”. Even more
curious. $32 for a tool for career advancement? That’s cheap! “Do you buy other
books?” — “Yes, well I’m always looking for books to buy. When I see one, I’ll
download the free sample on iBooks and that’s where I keep all my to-read books”.
It’s not that the ebooks were expensive, it was that he didn’t know if he would have
time to read them!

25. Price might not be the main anxiety
Get the other anxieties taken care of (e.g. the amount of time
to read that ebook), solve the Job-To-Be-Done really well, and
charge a higher price.
$

26. Anxieties about
the product
Attraction to
the product
Forces
Attraction is another force affecting the buyer. That one pulls
toward the purchase.

27. Emotions, rationality
In the journey toward buying your product, your buyer will
have a mix of rational and emotional reasons for progressing
toward the purchase.

28. Anxieties about
the product
Attraction to
the product
Struggle of
the moment
Forces of Progress
The buyer just wants progress on the Job she wants done.
The “Struggle of the moment” force is the one that propels the
buyer into action, to seek out a solution.

29. Winter Boots
STORY
A friend of mine bought some winter boots. $450 the pair! His story: he came from
the States, moved to Toronto (where he didn’t need to think about winter so much),
and now in Ottawa, and with winter coming, he needed something to prepare him
for the cold. His career is booming, and he has other things on his mind, so he didn’t
want to think about what shoes to wear, where to put his foot when he was out
walking, he just wanted to hire someone who thought of winter so he didn’t have to.
And he wanted to give his money to the company that made boots so that he didn’t
have to think about winter again for another 4 years.

30. Anxieties about
the product
Attraction to
the product
Struggle of
the moment
Forces of Progress
In the Winter Boots story, the Struggle was strong, the product
solved the problem well, and the anxiety wasn’t so much about the
price, but whether the boot would last 4 years.

31. Project management software
EXAMPLE
What would cause the project manager to hire your software? The struggle might
not be that strongly felt. Also, she probably has tools that do just fine: email for
asking for progress, Excel or a Gantt chart for projections, and meetings to status
and accountability. More than that, a project management software might make her
job more automated. Your software is competing against her sense of feeling useful!

32. Forces of Progress
1 2
34 Anxieties about
the product
Attraction to
the product
Struggle of
the moment
Habits of
the present
The fourth force is people’s habits and their mix of solutions. That’s
the strongest gravity well pulling the buyer away from the purchase.
That’s your real competition.

33. Your real competition
A
B
C
Habits
Your product is competing not so much with other similar
product offerings, but mostly with the person’s existing
habits, or the person’s mix of cobbled-together solutions.
Your real competitor is non-consumption.
Solve the Job well, and find a bigger market share.

34. Hiring something
Firing something else
Buyers are firing something else when hiring your product.
In the case of Project Management Software, they’re firing the
use of emails threads and meetings.

35. Highrise
STORY
Highrise makes Customer Relationship Management software. It helps track
conversations you have with people, and it helps notify you to do follow-ups.
A profitable product, it now finds itself amongst heavy competitors. How should the
product position itself? So Highrise conducted interviews with people who had
purchased Highrise. They found three jobs from those interviews, but the main one:
people who had a business doing art or consulting, who weren’t doing full-time sales,
just needed a way to get more efficient at tracking their contacts and the next steps.
No learning curve. Import my contacts, set it up, go back to doing my work.

36. This is their home page before changing their messaging based on the interview findings.

37. Here’s one variation they’re testing

38. Here’s another variation

39. The Journey
The forces aren’t static for each
individual. They’re dynamic, they
change in time.
Along with the Forces Diagram, the
Timeline is a tool developed by the Re-
Wired Group.

40. Pacemakers in India
STORY
This example is from the book “Competing Against Luck” from Clayton Christensen.
There’s this company who wanted to sell their pacemakers in India. They weren’t
selling that much so they investigated the problem. It turned out that in India, family
members help pool the money for a family member in need, but timing was a
problem. So the company created a product alongside the pacemaker — a financial
product — a bridge loan, which would give time for the buyer to get the money
from family members.

41. People hire more than your product
They’re hiring the whole package. Like in the story of the
Pacemakers in India, you can add extra things around your
product to help with the main hire, and resolve anxieties.

42. Re-
Cap
• What’s the Job?
• The situation, not the buyer
• Struggle, Attraction,
Anxieties, Habits
(Forces of Progress)
• Habits: Your real competition
• They’re firing something else
Jobs-To-Be-Done is a solid foundation

43. Jobs-To-Be-Done is a solid foundation
Starting small
Being intentional
Betting on what doesn’t change
Getting to the bottom of things
Especially for those who share these
values

44. Jobs-To-Be-Done is a solid foundation
Starting small
Being intentional
Betting on what doesn’t change
Getting to the bottom of things
• What’s the Job?
• The situation, not the buyer
• Struggle, Attraction, Anxieties, Habits
(Forces of Progress)
• Habits: Your real competition
• They’re firing something else
You can apply these for selling anything
Services IdeasBrand

45. Jobs-To-Be-Done is a solid foundation
Starting small
Being intentional
Betting on what doesn’t change
Getting to the bottom of things
• What’s the Job?
• The situation, not the buyer
• Struggle, Attraction, Anxieties, Habits
(Forces of Progress)
• Habits: Your real competition
• They’re firing something else
You can apply these for selling anything
Services IdeasBrand
• Craft all the connected experiences

46. Next
Steps
• Each of your offerings: for
which Jobs would people
hire these?
• Interview your users
Good course offered by the
Re-Wired Group
• Milkshake video, book
recommendations at
pascallaliberte.me

47. Thank you
Pascal Laliberté
pascal@pascallaliberte.me
http://pascallaliberte.me